Electronic communications or communications, including but not limited to telecommunications, have been widely adopted into society. Communications service providers, such as telecommunications service providers, have created a wide variety of service plans that are marketed and sold to consumers, both public and private, over the years. Such service plans generally include an access agreement, typically monthly, and a usage based agreement. The usage component may include no included usage, limited included usage, and unlimited included usage. For example, when usage is billed, service plans have included charging customers or users on a usage or time basis, such as $0.10 per minute. Alternative service plans have used hybrid approaches, such as having a base service price that includes a certain amount of usage and variable rates for usage over the limit. One example of variable rates for usage may include varying rates for amounts of usage (e.g., differential prices for differential thresholds of usage). Still yet, other service plans provide for variable usage rates for calls during peak periods and unlimited usage during non-peak periods, such as nights and weekends. Some service plans provide unlimited calling to other customers on the same network or to certain telephone numbers. Another service plan that has been offered includes unlimited calling to anyone and anywhere for a fixed rate. The foregoing are merely some examples of the hundreds, if not thousands, of service plans that have been made available by communications services providers to consumers. These service plans may include usage paid in advance, pay as you go, or in arrears.
As communication services have expanded to include data services, communications service providers have offered a variety of service plans to support data services. The data services typically may include short message services (SMS) or text messaging, multimedia messaging services (MMS), Internet access, web browsing, multimedia streaming, data downloading and uploading (e.g., videos and movies), etc. The service plans vary in a similar manner as voice service plans with the addition of factoring in amount of bits, number of messages, data rates, network type (e.g., 3G, 4G, fiber, DSL etc.), and so forth. The communications services are inclusive of both mobile and non-mobile communications services, and wireless, satellite, fiber and wireline (landline) communications services.
As is often the case, with any business offer a certain portion of the population takes advantage of, or “game” the system, which tends to cause the business to be less profitable or potentially lose money. As an example in the communications industry, a service plan that offers unlimited calling is abused when a customer resells that unlimited calling feature to non-customers (e.g., neighbors who do not have a service plan with the communications service provider). Another possible form of abuse includes customers calling telephone numbers that require the carrier of a calling party to pay money to a terminating carrier that shares the revenue with the calling party. Another possible form of abuse are users who use the service in disproportionate amounts or for purposes for which the communications service in the service plan is not intended (e.g., as a baby monitor). These, and a variety of other abuses, cost communications service providers hundreds of millions of dollars every year. These costs result in significantly lower profitability as a whole for the communications service providers and deters communications providers from offering certain service plans. As such, there is a real problem that plagues the communications service industry with unauthorized or even abusive usage of communications services. For communications service providers that do not allow customers to pay for usage in arrears, these providers must be able to control, lessen, or prevent such charges or permit such charges to be debited from a pre-arranged account.